Suunto Watches Rule!

I have a friend who is a bit of a gadget guy and he has a major watch fetish. He has a collection of 4 or 5 watches, the most coveted of which is his Suunto altitude watch. Whenever we ski or dirt-bike together, he sets it, and at the end of the day he hooks it up to his computer and prints out a chart of our ascending and descending activities for the day. He never tires of analyzing the printout and identifying on the graph which run (or logging road) we were on, and where we paused throughout the day. He always prints an extra copy for all those who happened to come along, and we all accept graciously. After leaving, we quietly throw them away. What are we supposed to do, scrap-book them?

Anyhow, my friend (let’s call him Carmen) now has his eyes on another Suunto watch that he is all excited about. Never one to ignore the next gadget craze, I decided to investigate it. The new watch Carmen wants is called the n3i, and it connects to a new service provided by Microsoft called MSNDirect.

As I have written about in previous columns, I am not entirely certain that I want to become too “connected”, as it seems that there are already too many Crackberries/Palm Pilots around, and people with cell phones or some other device attached to their heads. However, the MSNDirect Service is certainly a compelling new idea. Here is how it works:

To exploit this new service, you need to qualify in three ways; you need to subscribe to the service (about $14 p/month or $55 annually), you need to purchase a compatible watch, and you need to live within the coverage area. Checking the website, we qualify here in Whistler; the only other places in BC are Vancouver and Victoria. If you live elsewhere in BC, the watch will be useless to you (though I presume it will still tell you the time).

Thus equipped, with the “Smart Plan” you can have weather reports, news headlines, stock quotes, sports scores, horoscopes, and lottery results sent directly to your watch. Now that’s cool! If you opt for the $25 upgrade (annual), you can also have one way MSN messenger messages and Microsoft Outlook appointments sent to your watch. Imagine, now your wife can messenger the last minute grocery list directly to your watch!

Wait a minute – maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all…

As it turns out, the Suunto is not the only manufacturer of watches that is compatible with the MSNDirect service. Suunto is just the brand that my friend Carmen likes, and when he likes a brand he simply cannot be dissuaded from it. Don’t get me started on his fanaticism for North Face clothing, but that’s another topic. Anyhow, you can get watches from Tissot, Swatch, Suunto, Fossil and Abacus according to Microsoft’s website. There are probably many more manufacturers at this very moment scrambling to produce their own versions of this watch. I have a feeling there will be a ready audience for it, judging from the public’s acceptance of cell phones and Crackberries.

When Carmen gets his, I’ll write a column about it. Meanwhile, if you want to investigate further go to www.msndirect.com, all the information you need is there.

The Metric vs Imperial Paradox

I have had a good month, a very good month. Because I have had a good month, I can with some relief think about plunking some money down for some summer tires. After giving my old car a good spring clean-up and realizing what a beautiful classic machine it truly is, I figured why not splurge and put on some big chrome wheels and some fat sporty tires for the summer. Maybe even a high performance exhaust system with a bit of a bark to it, and some dual chrome tips. I have accepted my motorhead/redneck recessive gene, so why not have some fun with it?

So I began my research for some nice wheels, beginning of course with the internet. This quest has turned into a week-long obsession, which is driving my wife-like-unit crazy. After searching through literally thousands of models of wheels, I have found only one model that fit both my criteria and my car; a 17” wheel with a classic 5 spoke design.

But the real intent of this column is to shed light on the world’s strange system of measurements. Take the example of a typical tire measurement: 195/75-15. The first number is the measurement of the tire width, in millimetres. OK, fine, that makes sense. The second number is an aspect ratio; it tells us that the sidewall is 75 percent the size of the tire width. Who cares? Just give me the sidewall measurement! But the truly bizarre thing is the third number, which is the diameter of the wheel, given in inches! Great… We’re already confused trying to figure out the aspect ratio of our sidewall, and now we have to deal with the wheel diameter in imperial measurements!

So now that I have found a wheel which actually fits my car, the measurements for that wheel are as follows: 17” x 8”. I’m dealing with inches again, but now I have to fit to a tire width which is given in millimetres. Arrghh!!

This got me thinking about how unsuccessful we’ve been in our quest to become metric. When a visitor asks me, “how high are the mountains here?” I go into imperial-mode and I tell them approximately 7000 feet. If I am talking about my skis, or how much fresh snow has fallen, I switch to metric and talk in centimetres.

If I buy a plot of land and need to have it surveyed, the surveyors come in with their metric instruments and do all their plotting in metric. When they are finished, the guys building my house work entirely in imperial. Strange but true.

If somebody asks me how many kilograms I weigh, I haven’t the slightest idea. I am 180 pounds, you figure it out. If I see a car gets an economy rating of 15 Litres p/100 kms, I immediately get my calculator out to figure out the MPG rating, so that it makes sense to me. In the MPG system, the larger the number, the better the economy. In the new system, the lower number, the better the economy. Why not Kilometres per Litre? Who decided to switch the factors around? It’s a conspiracy designed to confuse us, I know it is.

I was probably 10 or 11 years old when Canada officially went metric, but I am convinced now that this was a bad experiment, because we haven’t yet learned how to be entirely one or the other. I doubt that we ever will. We are doomed to be forever stuck somewhere in the middle.

Mountain Linux User's Group First Meeting

Last Friday I attended the first Mountain Linux Users Group at the HotSpot in Squamish to further scratch my Linux itch. I was the third to arrive, and introduced myself to organizer Johnny Stork and his wife who were sitting anxiously wondering if anyone would come. Shortly after I got there, people began flooding in and it was soon apparent that we didn’t have enough seats for everybody.

Once it seemed that we were a complete group, Johnny Stork, a soft-spoken and articulate man, owner of Open Enterprise Solutions (http://www.openenterprise.ca) led things off with introductions. What astounded me was the crazy mixture of people who were drawn to this event; we had three women, two grizzled old-timers, several bluecollar computer hobbyists, a few retirees, and a number of professional IT geeks such as myself. Also present was luminary Dee-Ann LeBlanc, author of Linux for Dummies, as well as thirteen other books. If you don’t recognize her name, then you soon will if you are following the Linux story.

The discussion was kept fairly general; everybody offered up their Linux stories and experiences. Much discussion time was given to the question of “which Linux is the best Linux?” and opinions varied widely; the main ones discussed were RedHat, Debian, Ubuntu (the version I’ve been playing with), Mandriva, Linspire, Knoppix and Xandros. It was notable that a few people there had been using Linux for several years, and a few didn’t even know how to operate Windows. One of the men there, well into his seventies, had been using Linux exclusively for eight years. Two members in attendance were from Whistler (other than me), a couple of young guys who operate a wireless hotspot internet service. They use Linux on Flash Memory cards in their HotSpot wireless equipment, and I believe they are using Linux on their servers also.

Dee-Ann LeBlanc, a dedicated Linux professional, was a fountain of knowledge. For each attendee who offered up a story or a problem, Dee-Ann had something to offer in the way of advice or opinion. This woman is in high demand in Linux circles and keeps very busy giving talks and presentations on the subject. She is a self-professed Microsoft critic and a huge promoter of the Open Source movement.

It was also evident that Johnny Stork, who didn’t look are act like the geek that he surely must be, is a true Linux addict. He told us that he started off as a hobbyist, and now makes his living as solutions provider and systems integrator in Squamish, Whistler and Vancouver. He told us he has 5 Linux servers running in his house - now that’s dedicated! He is also hugely knowledgeable about the topic and a really personable guy too; a rare combination of attributes in the geek world as Dee-Ann LeBlanc pointed out early in the discussion.

I had fun. The event ended with a draw for a copy of Linux for Dummies, and I won it, autographed and all. Thank you Dee-Ann. I will definitely be attending the next MLUG meeting next month. If you are interested and would like to attend, I suggest joining the mailing list by writing to mailman@mountainlinux.ca. Johnny Stork is also looking for a larger venue for the next meeting, so if anyone knows a good spot in the Squamish area, please let us know.

The Paperless Office Promise

When Personal Computers first started appearing in the mid 80’s, the big promise was that they would reduce paper consumption and waste. What has happened instead is that computers have inadvertently caused us to consume, waste and archive more paper than ever before. It is easy to understand why… in the old days, if you made a typo with your Underwood, you merely corrected it with White-Out. You wouldn’t bother typing the whole document again, that would be a terrible waste of time (vs. waste of paper). Your typed document had sweat value. Once done it was the only copy, there were no wasteful photocopiers in the old days, so your original had to get the job done.

Today, you would correct the typo on your computer and then reprint it. Because it is so easy, you might do this 2 or 3 times before you finally decide that the document is perfect, and the first 2 or 3 drafts wind up in our overflowing landfills (along with all those expired laser and inkjet cartridges). Computer technology has made us more wasteful than ever before.

Laserfiche, Xerox and other companies, are attempting to change all this with “paperless office” solutions, the primary components being specialized software combined with scanners. The idea is that all incoming paper documents are immediately converted to electronic documents, then shredded. The scanned documents are then archived electronically into logically named folders which are searchable. All documents produced in-house are stored in similar searchable folders, and are not printed unless required.

When implemented in a large company with, for example, 100 employees, the benefits are compelling. Let’s imagine Sally needs to fetch a document and send it to a client; in the old days, she walks across the room, or perhaps down a hallway to another room, confronts a huge collection of filing cabinets, and starts searching for her document. After 15 minutes of searching she finds it, she walks back down the hallway to the copy room and makes a copy. Then she either mails or faxes the document to the client, then returns the original to its location in the complex filing room. In the paperless office, she would never have to leave her desk. She could perform a Boolean search and find the document instantly, then either fax or email it from her PC, without ever handling a piece of paper, fax machine, copier, envelope or stamp. Not only that, she has saved a great deal of time and therefore has made herself a far more efficient employee.

Of course, the true paperless office is not possible, at least not yet. The client receives his requested document from Sally and immediately prints it. But the benefit from Sally’s point of view is easy to measure; she is more efficient, and so are the other employees in her office. The need to dedicate an entire room to document storage has been eliminated too, thereby reducing rent costs. The only caveat is that a paperless office must run on an absolutely bullet-proof network that is reliable and always backed up, and as we all know, the reliability of computers and networks is questionable, often requiring a full-time IT staff to keep them functioning. Does this factor outweigh the advantages? Time will tell, if the trend towards a paperless office continues to gain momentum.

Thanks to Carol Williams from Ikon for providing information about LaserFiche document management solutions.